First come first serve for clan names? Can only one clan be named, say... Southern Empire? Same with tags? No need for tags in steam names anymore?
First come, first serve is correct.
Clan names must be between 5 and 30 letters and can only be letters. Tags must be between 2-4, again only letters. Both needs to be unique.
I expected tags to be used in game before the name but I can't see it anywhere in code. Note that clan features are not final.
Can we create a server and use it for testing/training?
Creating or joining a clan game requires 6-person party where every member is part of the same clan. So if you have 12 person that wants to test/train and you can get 2 groups of 6-person parties in same clan (or all 12 in same clan) you can do it.
Can we search for a random clanmatch aswell? As in, is there a random button for maps and factions, or a way to pick your prefered faction and/or map and still get random opponents?
As far as I know, there is no randomness involved in any part. Your opponent can be pseudo-random if you create a game without password and accept whoever wants to play against you. But even that is not really random.
How will inner clan matches work ?
Answered above.
How much control over those servers do we have? Can we swap sides between sets? Do we need 6 players on both teams for the game to start? Can we force start it with a command? Will it automatically end after a team reaches 3 points? Admin tools?
It is pretty much same system with matchmaking. Only this time you can choose map, factions, game mode and a password if you want.
my worry is a troll would just steal the names of some of the prominent clans in the community
Creating a clan requires a 6-person party. Still possible but not as easy.
the refactor to push changes quicker is far better than any specific changes anyways, since this was the main issue
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. That change was only for private testing servers. It does not affect live servers in any way. What it did was that we could change combat parameters while the game was still going so tester would see changes immediately.